Mostly British-born, they are from Iraqi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian and Turkish communities.

Ms Champion said asking if there were “cultural issues” was simply “child protection”.

Northumbria Police said society “can’t be afraid to have this discussion”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Champion, Labour’s shadow women and equalities minister, said gang-related child sexual exploitation involves “predominately Pakistani men” who were involved in such cases “time and time and time again”.

Julie Bindel has stood out for an exceptional article on the issues raised.

We do not need to ask why so many men of Asian origin abuse children. This is a racist question. Rather, we need to ask why some white liberals appear to bend over backwards to find a way to claim these men are set up

The Newcastle case, in which 17 men and one women were convicted for rape, sexual assault, sadistic abuse and general heartless violation of girls and woman, has now become another argument about race. While on the one hand the racists and fascists twist the truth about child sexual abuse to give kudos to their arguments against asylum seekers and black and minority ethnic British citizens, much of the liberal left wring their hands and worry about being labelled “racist”.

It would appear that this matters more to some that preventing the rape of children and young women.

We do not need to ask why so many men of Asian origin abuse children. This is a racist question. Rather, we need to ask why some white liberals appear to bend over backwards to find a way to claim these men are set up, or unjustly treated, and why police and other state agencies have been known to turn the other cheek.

In 2007, my name was added to an ever-growing list on Islamophobia Watch the same day that my investigation on grooming gangs in Northern English towns was published in a national newspaper. I was accused of demonising the entire British Asian community by specifying the fact that these particular criminal gangs originated from Pakistan. My reason for mentioning ethnicity at all was to raise the unavoidable fact that some child protection agencies, and a number of senior police officers have made it plain that they were taking a hands-off approach in such cases lest they were labelled racist.

I was clear in the piece – I did not think that the police particularly cared about having the slur of “Islamaphobe” thrown at them from lefties, but rather they didn’t want to be responsible for policing a “race riot” as one senior police officer in West Yorkshire said would be the result of raising the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

During my investigations, I found there to be a stubborn defensiveness from a number of quarters, including some charities, when I asked about the relevance of the ethnic origin of the perpetrators, despite the fact that I carefully explained that I wished to tackle this thorny issue from the perspective of an anti-racist, and not a member of the BNP. Furthermore, I said how disgusted I was that racist pressure groups had colonised these crimes for their own dangerous agenda, and had been allowed to do so because the issue had been given a wide berth by the left. Some of the individuals that gave me the cold shoulder back in the early 2000s were named in the Jay report of 2013 as having failed the victims of child sexual abuse, partly because of their “nervousness” and unwillingness to engage with issues regarding the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

Although I was congratulated on journalistic endeavours in exposing these crimes by a number of friends and colleagues of Asian descent – such as the journalist and anti-racist campaigner Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – many white left-leaning liberals clearly believed I should not have even mentioned ethnicity or religious identity of the perpetrators lest it might “incite racism”

MEMBERS of grooming gangs should not be considered Muslim due to the un-Islamic nature of their vile actions, a high profile member of the community has claimed.

An impassioned Newsnight debate on the role of the Islamic community after the heinous incidents, one-panel member protested at blame being levelled at British Muslims.

It follows a court hearing earlier this week which saw 17 men and one woman convicted of rape, sexual assault, human trafficking and inciting prostitution as the city of Newcastle was added to the growing list of UK towns blighted by the evil grooming gangs.

Muhbeen Hussain, founder of the group British Muslim Youth, claimed the sex gang incident was not a Muslim problem in an emotional speech which brought on criticism from controversial columnist Katie Hopkins.

Speaking on Newsnight Mr Hussain said: “Islam is a religion of all cultures.

The Newsnight debate (here) began by underlining that there was a problem, the number of similar cases could not escape attention, however marginal and unrepresentative they were of the wider community.

It was impressive to see how the debate that followed, between young Muslims of very different views, raised a whole series of issues, including religion.

Those taking part were not shy of pointing out that sex abuse cases had come up in other quarters, though perhaps citing the Catholic Church would have been more relevant than the name of name of Jimmy Savile.

As some participants underlined, the way in which the prosecuted acted had a lot to do with a kind of night-time abuse of the vulnerable.

One mentioned that the culture of dividing women between respectable veiled Muslim women, and Western dressed white women, was a serious problem.

This is related to religion: the laying down of “modest” dress codes is not just ‘cultural’ by sanctioned by many readings of the Qur’an. The converse, is that “immodest” women are worth less.

In many states modest dress is laid down by law, “in Iran, women are required to wear loose-fitting clothing and a headscarf in public”, “Saudi Arabia is different from many Islamic societies in the extent of the covering that it considers Islamically correct hijab (everything except the hands and eyes) and the fact that covering is enforced by Mutaween or religious police.”